The second episode of the fifth season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (January 27, 2021). You can listen to the episode right now and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:
Show Notes about the Story
This episode is based on Jonah in the Old Testament of the Bible (click to read). Any direct biblical quotations in the episode are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
A Whale of a Tale
Jonah himself may be an actual historical figure. He is at least mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 where it says that he made a prophecy concerning the reestablishment of the borders of the kingdom. But there or some good reasons not to take the Book of Jonah as a historical story of events in the life of this historical prophet. There are just too many things in the story that don’t make sense as simple history. The big fish is only one of the reasons why it is difficult to take it literally. Jonah is also given a very strange assignment. While it was common for prophets to make pronouncements against foreign nations, Jonah’s story contains the only account of a prophet actually sent to preach to a foreign nation.
The story of Jonah’s journey certainly puts us into the realm of the fantastic even before the great fish shows up. His destination in Tarshish is at such a great distance that it likely would have been seen as almost a mythical place on the very edge of the world, especially to the ancient Israelites who don’t seem to have been a seafaring people.
The ensuing storm and the encounter with the great fish, certainly make for great storytelling. They also introduce what is clearly a theme for the entire book — the idea that God’s grace and mercy might extend even to people of other nations. It is the foreign captain of the ship who says to Jonah, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.” (Jonah 1:6) It is he, in other words, who first proposes the idea that Yahweh, the God of Israel, might extend his mercy even to these foreigners. This is an ironic or perhaps even a satirical idea in this book. The very notion that foreigners might know more about the very nature of the god of Israel than a prophet of Israel is meant to be humorous.
This is ultimately brought home in the absurd picture of the prophet sulking inside his little shelter as he waits for the destruction of the hated people in the city of Nineveh.
Once again it is an insignificant plant (that scholars have suggested that it is meant to be understood as a castor bean plant) that is absurdly appointed to teach the prophet something about the nature of Yahweh. It is Jonah’s care for this meaningless weed that teaches him something about the nature of the grace of the God that he is supposed to have such insight into as a prophet.
Thus I would argue, as have a number of scholars, that Jonah would have been read as of work of satire. It was received as a fictional story, but one that was intended to teach the readers some very profound truths about the God that they claimed as their own.
Music in this Episode
“AhDah” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Daily Beetle by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3579-daily-beetle
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Retelling the Bible 